“Says Nadler: “I have no personal knowledge of what I’m about to say. What I’m about to say is my guess…”

“My guess,” Nadler said, “knowing how politics works, what I’m about to say is not particularly…”

He searches for the word. Rejects a couple suggestions.

“…not particularly complimentary towards Sen. Obama,” he says.

“Think of the history here,” says the six-term New York congressman. “You have a guy who’s half-white, half-black. He goes to an Ivy League school, comes to Chicago … to start a political career. Doesn’t know anybody.

“Gets involved with community organizing — why? Because that’s how you form a base. OK. Joins the largest church in the neighborhood. About 8,000 members. … Why did he join the church? … Because that’s how you get to know people.

“Now maybe it takes a couple years,” Nadler says, suggesting that soon Obama starts to think of Wright, “’Jesus, the guy’s a nut, the guy’s a lunatic.’ But you don’t walk out of a church with 8,000 members in your district.”

Suggests a woman: “You don’t walk in though.”

“He didn’t know it when he walked in, presumably,” said Nadler.

And then, the line that may haunt Nadler for four years or longer: “He didn’t have the political courage to make the statement of walking out.”

“Now, what does it tell me?” Nadler asked. “It tells me that he wasn’t terribly political courageous. Does it tell me that he agreed with the reverend in any way? No. It tells me he didn’t want to walk out of a church in his district.”

What’s even funnier about this is that the previous time I can recall Nadler talking about Obama was in December 2006, when Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer chatted with him at the Israeli Policy Forum.

Nadler told the Observer that Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., “had called him earlier yesterday to tell him that she was leaning towards running for president, and that he said he would support her. His choice, he explained, was a pragmatic one.

“‘I don’t see a lot of other good possibilities in our party,’ said Nadler… ‘Someone like Barack Obama, who is suddenly a real candidate, always worries me, because he is a novice candidate. He hasn’t done it before. Novice candidates, not always, but 95 percent of the time make a mistake. I made some terrible mistakes in office, when I was district leader, no one remembers what they are. I wasn’t in front of all the news cameras.’”

Like I said. The Congressman is to be commended for his honesty, even if it was reluctant. He clearly knew his audience wasn’t going to buy any spin about why Obama stayed in that church, so he told the truth.

Think about what a lack of political courage really means when you vote.